Government Blockchain, the New Direct Republic?

We’ve talked to Donnie Gebert in the past about his idea of creating a government on the blockchain. It appears his idea is spreading. Here is an article in International Policy Digest putting forth the idea of voting through the blockchain.

Consider the following thought experiment: what would happen if we think of votes as a currency? Let’s call such a voting currency — GovCoin. In today’s representative democracy,

GovCoins are in short supply — one citizen gets one GovCoin (vote) every 4–5 years.

GovCoins (Votes) have a very high negative rate: if you do not use them on Election Day, they lose all value.

GovCoins (Votes) are “accepted” by very few people: you can give your GovCoins to only pre-selected “candidates.”

These design choices reflect fundamental design choices of representative democracy — they were well suited for the time when they were designed. Since governance needs continuity and since elections were a costly and time-consuming exercise, citizens elect representatives once every 4–5 years. Since the number of people interested in politics as a full-time profession is limited, the choice set of representatives is limited to a few candidates.

Are these design choices valid today? Do we really need citizens physically travelling to polling booths? Must the choice of citizen participation in governance be binary: either jump in full time or be limited to vote once every 4–5 years? Aren’t there other forms of participation in this spectrum?

Paul Gordon is the publisher and editor of iState.TV. He has published and edited newspapers, poetry magazines and online weekly magazines.
He is the director of Social Cognito, an SEO/Web Marketing Company. You can reach Paul at pg@istate.tv